Translated material
Four villas of banker Sergei Pugachev were seized in France
In France, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands, the assets of banker Sergei Pugachev were arrested, from whom the Moscow Arbitration Court decided to recover 75.6 billion rubles. This was reported by the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA), on whose claim this decision was made in 2015.
Interim measures were imposed, in particular, on Pugachev’s 47-meter yacht and four of his villas in France.
The DIA emphasized that they are facing “opposition” from Pugachev, who, despite being sentenced to two years in prison in the UK, “continues to evade justice by hiding in France.”
Pugachev’s representative Dmitry Morochenko told Vedomosti that the information about the seizure of the banker’s assets is not true. “For many years now, the DIA has been announcing the seizure of a house in France belonging to Sergei Pugachev, which is an outright lie,” he said.
According to him, in the summer of 2015, the High Court of London ordered the banker to “disclose information about his assets as part of a freezing order, which was done.” “Nothing new has happened since then,” Morochenko said.
The use of a legal mechanism for uncovering corporate veils, which makes it possible to foreclose on assets directly at the place of their actual location, despite the corporate or trust ownership structure used by S. V. Pugachev, allowed the DIA to impose interim measures on assets actually owned by him and located in the above-mentioned foreign jurisdictions.
- The Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) accuses Pugachev of involvement in the bankruptcy of Mezhprombank, of which he was a beneficiary. In April 2015, the Moscow Arbitration Court, following a claim by the DIA, decided to recover 75.6 billion rubles from Pugachev and other former managers of Mezhprombank.
- In February 2016, the High Court of London, which was considering the DIA's claim to recognize the decision of a Russian court in England and Wales, sentenced Pugachev to two years in prison for violating British law. In particular, Pugachev was found guilty of giving false testimony and violating the ban on leaving the country.